Egerton Ryerson and Education in Upper CanadaPutman, J. Harold (John Harold)
History
Egerton Ryerson and Education in Upper Canada
Putman, J. Harold (John Harold)
Education -- Ontario; Ryerson, Egerton, 1803-1882
Nor was all the criticism of Normal School affairs directed towards the
teachers who left the profession; those who remained in it were
emissaries of evil. Then, as now, there were croakers who thought that a
boy born on a farm naturally belonged there, and that any enlightenment
which tended to make him dissatisfied with his surroundings was an evil.
One, signing himself Angus Dallas of Toronto, wrote several pamphlets
attacking the school system. Speaking of the Normal School, he said:
"The young men who have attended six months at that institution and
leave it with certificates to teach, go forth into the country with the
most mistaken estimate of their own importance. They open schools
wherever accident places them, and by teaching and familiar intercourse,
combined with the example of nomadic habits, for they seldom remain
longer than twelve months in one place, they soon contaminate the minds
of the older pupils and also of young men who may reside in the
neighbourhood, by their doctrines of enlightened citizenship; and thus
these pupils soon learn to disdain honest labour."[129]
[129] The Toronto schools were at this time very expensively managed as
compared with schools in other cities of Upper Canada. This could not be
attributed to the expense of Normal-trained teachers. In 1858, ten years
after the Normal School was established, no Common School in Toronto was
in charge of a Normal-trained teacher, and only two or three such
teachers had ever been employed there. See D. H. E., Vol. XIII., p. 299.
In 1855, the Legislature had authorized a museum and library in
connection with the Department of Education. These were formally opened
in 1857 and the library contributed much to increase the efficiency of
the Normal School by widening the scope of the students' reading.
In the following year the Council of Public Instruction revised the
Normal School Regulations. Qualifications necessary for admission were
accurately set forth and the course of study defined for both second and
first-class certificates. There continued to be two sessions a year, but
students who entered to qualify for a second-class certificate spent two
or more sessions before reaching a standard entitling them to a
first-class certificate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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